Blue Jays 15, Red Sox 7: In crucial chance, Lester implodes

Sunday

Jul 22, 2012 at 8:28 PM

Positioned at the close of a homestand that started promisingly and a bear of a road trip, Sunday’s game hinged as pivotal in the Red Sox season. Like all too many of their most significant games of late,

By TIM BRITTON

Positioned at the close of a homestand that started promisingly and a bear of a road trip, Sunday’s game hinged as pivotal in the Red Sox season. Like all too many of their most significant games of late, the Red Sox lost.

Boston didn’t put up much of a fight in its attempt to avoid a sweep by the Blue Jays, who shelled Jon Lester en route to a 15-7 pummeling at Fenway Park. Toronto had not swept the Sox in Boston since the end of the 2009 season.

The series sweep dropped the Red Sox to 3-4 on the homestand, back to .500 on the season and, once again, into last place in the American League East. They now head out on the road to face the junior circuit’s two best teams in the Rangers and Yankees, their precarious hold on relevance hanging in the balance.

“Tough series. Really tough series,” Cody Ross said. “It stings.”

Coming into 2012, having Lester on the hill for a critical game appeared a formula for success for Boston. But this season, and more specifically this month, the team’s Opening Day starter has been unreliable time after time.

Never, however, has he been as bad as this. One could hardly conceive of him being as bad as this, as bad as allowing the most earned runs by a Red Sox starter in 29 years.

A nightmarish performance on Sunday commenced with his very first delivery, a sinker that Brett Lawrie crushed into the parking lot beyond the Green Monster and across Lansdowne Street. It marked the second time in three starts and fifth time in his career that Lester had surrendered a leadoff homer.

“We just faced a real aggressive team today,” catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia said. “When you feel comfortable and you got your command, that’s what you want: you want them to be aggressive and start swinging at your pitches. But when you’re not feeling comfortable and you don’t have the command, that’s what happens.”

It spiraled down from there. Lester walked Yunel Escobar. Colby Rasmus reached on a bunt single. Edwin Encarnacion flipped an RBI ground-rule double to right. After a run-scoring groundout from J.P. Arencibia, Rajai Davis doubled home another run.

In perhaps the finest expression of this absurd turn of events for the left-hander, Lester struck out Travis Snider, only to see him reach on a wild pitch. Jeff Mathis then squeezed Davis in for the inning’s fifth run.

Lester has allowed nine earned runs in the first inning in his last three starts.

Unfortunately, the damage was not limited in scope or duration. It carried over into the second, when Arencibia parked one into the left-center seats for a three-run homer. The light-hitting Davis — with all of 17 career home runs — followed with his own no-doubter to Lansdowne.

Lester pitched a pair of scoreless frames in the third and fourth before Snider tagged him for another long home run — this one of the two-run variety to straightaway center.

Lester allowed the 11 earned runs on nine hits in four-plus innings. The nine hits weren’t exactly cheap; alongside the four homers, there were a pair of doubles and a sharp single off the Monster. The four home runs were a career high; the five walks tied one.

“I want him to get better,” manager Bobby Valentine said of Lester. “He’s taking it tough.”

I’ve got to get back to trying to keep it simple,” said Lester. “I can’t worry about the outcome. It’s cliché and it sounds stupid, but if I just try to get back to basics — keeping the ball down, in and out, up down, change speeds — everything will be different.”

It didn’t much matter what the Red Sox bats did for Lester, seeing as he succumbed any traction they gained in the subsequent half-inning. Adrian Gonzalez yanked a three-run homer in the first, and Jacoby Ellsbury hit his first home run of 2012 to center in the fifth.

Boston cut the deficit to four in the sixth, but Mark Melancon yielded four more Toronto runs in the top of the eighth to punctuate the defeat.